SACHA:

 On my daily walks I have realized that there are a lot of lonely people in this world. The folk you see plodding the pavements, the old man with a dog, the old lady carrying a heavy shopping bag, the young  woman sitting on a park bench, the man propping up the bar on any street corner. We all know them, or of them, but we do not have the time to really stop and get close to these people, whom for some reason have  reached the door of loneliness. We all feel lonely, ignored & forgotten at times. Life happens, we leave home, go to new places, immigrate to far flung  lands, we get married, divorced, kids leave home, life- partners die, & a thousand other things  happen to us  that can bring us to the brink of being totally alone. I would like to introduce you to my old friend Sacha  who died alone, & through her life story, made me realize that I should always stop & pat the dog of the old man, help the old lady carry her heavy shopping bag, smile, say hello, all such simple things that do not cost money, but makes the lonely feel that they are not alone because someone has taken the trouble to recognize that they exist.   Sacha was an old Russian lady from the golden age, & whom I met when I was 5 years old in the old Botswana in the 50s. She was always old & always bold. She had long silver hair past her knees that she plaited & coiled around her proud head which would be topped with an old straw hat & dangly silver earrings. She dressed in off-shoulder peasant blouses showing off her ample bosom, & huge dirndle skirts with dramatic colourful motifs. Sacha was from a poor family in Russia & she loved to sing & dance, & as her parents didn’t have the means for classes, she scrubbed the wooden floors of a dance studio in her village in exchange for classes. One day while on her hands & knees scrubbing her knuckles raw, the fabulous ballet dancer Pavlova came in & asked Sacha to dance with her, & she never tired of telling her story. She married a young soldier Stefan at 15, had a baby at 16, & saw both her young husband & baby bayoneted & killed before her eyes in the revolution. After that, she escaped to China in a little boat, where she met Sidney, or "my Sidka as she called him", a very proper, be-suited Englishman who worked for the customs there. But they had to escape from another revolution, & they ended up in Bechuanaland Protectorate (Botswana) where I was living. Sacha would take me fishing, hunt crocodiles, tell my fortune, dance on tables, laughing raucously, & at the same time, weep copiously over lost loves. She was poetry in motion. She & I would sit on the Matlapaneng bridge at dawn sharing a flask of tea & singing to the hippos as the African dawn materialised over the Thamalakane river. Later we would go back to her little house where she would brew up a strong tea called Czar Nikolas II tea in her silver, dragon-handled samovar which we would have with her homemade mango ice-cream tasting of golden African sunsets. Sacha had literally walked continents, loved fiercely , danced everywhere, sang always, & lived life to the full, & today I pay homage to her because there is not a soul on this planet who would remember her today. There is more about her in my book, but here there are limits to what one can write. Remember those whom have no one to remember them. Blessings.x